Okay, It's Time For Some Actual Facts About Our Economic Recovery

With only a week to go before the election, the "rooting" and
spinning from both sides has hit such a fever pitch that facts
have become irrelevant.

But for those who actually care about the economy, facts are
important.

So here are some facts.

First, our economic recovery over the past four years has
actually been better than what might have been expected under the
circumstances (a 30-year borrowing binge leading up to the
financial crisis).

Recoveries after such debt binges are notoriously sluggish, and
ours has actually tracked better than some economists expected.

A normal recession (blue) and a debt-fueled financial crisis
(purple).

The "channel" in the debt-fueled recession shows the expected
range of recovery for the U.S. economy over the past few years.
The dark purple line shows the actual US recovery, which has been
better than expected.

A lot of what we've been hearing in the past few months is about
how horrible our job-creation in the past few years has been.

Has it actually been horrible?

No.

Our job-creation over the past four years has actually
been just as strong as the job-creation during the prior
administration!

Don't believe it?

Let's look at some charts.

Here's a chart of overall job growth for the past 12 years. Both
George Bush, whose term started in January 2001 and Barack Obama,
whose term started in January 2009, inherited recessions. And, as
you can see, the slope of the jobs recoveries for both has been
similar. Bush's slope is slightly steeper, but not much.

Here, too, the tracks of the two administrations have been very
similar. Bush's "good period," once it finally got started, was
slightly better than Obama's, but not much. (And if you think
that Republicans have some super secret to sustainable job
growth, you're going to want to forget all about Bush's bad
period).

In other words, a lot of job growth in the Bush years came from
the growth of government jobs. The loss of government jobs under
Obama, meanwhile, which Republicans generally regard as a good
thing, have acted as a drag on overall Obama job growth.

Here's a look at private sector job growth under both Presidents.
Here, the slope of the recoveries is almost exactly the same:

The bottom line is that, yes, the recovery has been frustratingly
sluggish. But this is no surprise. Recoveries after borrowing
binges like the one we had for 30 years are generally sluggish.
This is because the borrowing in the years leading up to the
crisis helped fuel growth, while the "deleveraging" (debt
reduction) after the crisis actually hurts growth.

And the bottom line is also that private-sector job growth
under Barack Obama has been just as good if not better than it
was under George Bush.

Let's say that again.

Private-sector job growth under Barack Obama has been
just as good if not better than it was under George
Bush.